Management Structure
South Hams District Council has recently reviewed and realigned its management structure to enhance efficiencies. The management team manage the day to day business of Council officers as they go about their work delivering against our priorities.
Full details of the current council structure are available below:
The Council has forty elected Councillors, also known as Members. Each Member is democratically elected to represent their Wards for a term of four years. The last elections were held in May 2007.
Working with the District Council are five Town Councils (Dartmouth, Ivybridge, Kingsbridge, Salcombe and Totnes) and fifty four Parish Councils and two Parish Meetings (Harford and Woodleigh – in these Parishes there are no Parish Councillors, but there is an annual Parish meeting for Parishioners to raise issues.)
How are decisions made?
All Members meet together as the Council. Here Members decide the Council’s overall policies, particularly Statutory Plans and set the budget and Council Tax each year. The Council may question the performance and decisions of the Executive and of other bodies of the Council. Meetings may include formal decision making, wider debates and presentations. The Council may also meet informally in workshops and seminars.
The Executive is the part of the Council which is responsible for most day-to-day decisions. It is made up of the Leader of the Council, the Deputy Leader of the Council and six further Members, all of whom are appointed by the Council. The Executive has to make decisions which are in line with the Council’s overall policies and budget. If it wishes to make a decision which is outside the budget or policy framework, this must be referred to the Council as a whole to decide.
There are three Scrutiny Panels which support the work of the Executive and the Council as a whole, namely:
- a Corporate Performance and Resources Scrutiny Panel;
- a Community Life and Housing Scrutiny Panel; and
- an Economy and Environment Scrutiny Panel
Reports and recommendations are put to the Executive and the Council to advise on policy, budget and service delivery. Scrutiny Panels also monitor the decisions of the Executive and have the ability to ‘call-in’ decisions made by the Executive but not implemented. This enables the group to consider whether the decision is appropriate and if needs be recommend that the Executive reconsider the decision. Scrutiny may also be consulted by the Executive or the Council on forthcoming decisions and the development of policy.
The Membership on these panels will be determined at the Annual Meeting of the Council each May, but each non-executive councillor is expected to sit on one of these three Council bodies.
Policy Development and Review:
In this role, Scrutiny Panels can review the Council’s policies to assess whether the intended policy outcomes have been achieved and can also assist the Council during the early development of new policies and the formulation of key plans. Very often policy review can lead to recommendations to develop new policy. This work can be carried out by a Scrutiny Panel or a Panel may assign this task to a smaller number of Members as a Task and Finish Group. Carefully choosing which topics to review can help the Council to focus on the issues that matter to local people most and derive real outcomes for them.
